Micron Surges 19% Premarket After Earnings, Qualcomm Raises 2029 Target, PCE Data Due Tonight
Miles Bennett
Micron posted Q3 revenue of $41.46 billion, up 346% year-on-year and far above estimates, sending shares up 19% pre-market and Nasdaq futures up over 2% — but tonight's PCE inflation print will test whether this rally survives the open.
How big was the Micron beat?
Revenue hit $41.46 billion, well above the Street's $35.69 billion estimate. Adjusted EPS came in at $25.11, beating the $20.78 consensus by 21%.
Adjusted gross margin jumped from 74.9% last quarter to 84.9%. This means → memory chips are not just selling more — profit per chip is expanding fast.
Q4 revenue guidance of roughly $50 billion tops the $42.5 billion analyst estimate by nearly 18%. In plain terms = Micron itself sees the business still accelerating, not peaking.
Who else is riding the wave?
Memory stocks rallied across the board: SanDisk up over 15.6%, Western Digital up nearly 13%, Seagate up nearly 10%, Lam Research up about 6%.
Optical-communications names joined in: Corning up over 6%, Marvell and Coherent up nearly 4%.
This reflects a market reading the beat as proof that AI compute demand is still expanding broadly — not just a single-company story.
Why did Qualcomm jump 11%?
At its investor day, Qualcomm raised its FY2029 non-handset revenue target from $22 billion to $40 billion — nearly doubling it.
The breakdown: data-center revenue target of $15 billion, auto-chip target raised to $10 billion, and auto design-win pipeline expanded to $65 billion.
This means → Qualcomm is betting it will no longer be just a phone-chip company — data centers and autos are set to dominate future revenue.
What does IBM's sub-1nm chip actually mean?
IBM unveiled the world's first sub-1nm chip technology — packing nearly 100 billion transistors onto a fingernail-sized chip. Sub-1nm refers to a process node smaller than today's most advanced 2nm.
Performance gains of up to 50% and energy-efficiency gains of 70% over the 2nm node. IBM expects commercial production in five years at the earliest.
In plain terms = this is a lab demonstration, not a product you can buy. But it signals that the ceiling on chip performance is still far off.
Why is tonight's PCE print the biggest variable?
The market expects May core PCE — the Fed's preferred inflation gauge — to rise 0.3% month-on-month and 3.4% year-on-year.
April's year-on-year PCE reading of 3.8% already hit a three-year high. This means → if May comes in hotter than expected, the Fed's hawkish stance hardens further and rate-cut bets get pushed back.
Also due today: final Q1 GDP and weekly jobless claims. Multiple data points stacking up — whether this pre-market rally holds through the open depends on tonight's numbers.
What else do you need to know?
Wall Street's biggest banks raised dividends after passing the Fed's annual stress test: JPMorgan lifted its quarterly payout to $1.65/share and authorized a $50 billion buyback; Goldman raised from $4.50 to $5.00; Morgan Stanley, Citi, and Wells Fargo all hiked as well.
Oil fell after the Strait of Hormuz reopened: WTI dropped to $69.55/barrel, Brent to $73.08/barrel.
European equities rose broadly: Germany's DAX up 0.63%, UK's FTSE 100 up 0.45%, Euro Stoxx 50 up 0.70%.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.